


He Wanted To Show Her Home

by tatennant



Series: Doctor/Donna [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Torchwood
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-13
Updated: 2015-09-13
Packaged: 2018-04-20 12:33:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4787417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tatennant/pseuds/tatennant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor will never be able to see her again, and he knows that, but letting go can be so very difficult.</p>
            </blockquote>





	He Wanted To Show Her Home

**Author's Note:**

> well this is just a thing that i wrote at like two in the morning. it came to me in a flash of glory, and i hope you enjoy reading this beauty as much as i enjoyed writing it!

He wakes up to a gust of wind filling his lungs and the soft whirring sound of the time-travelling machine. She's lying next to him, her breath quietly warming his chest through his plain white t-shirt. She's asleep, wrapped in his strong and gentle embrace, and he can feel her chest rising and falling every time she takes in a soft breath of oxygen that the TARDIS had been regulating for human and Timelord convenience ever since he stepped foot on her nine hundred years ago.

In a quick, shuttering movement she startles him, and she is awake, but just barely alert. The ginger companion opens her tired yet impossibly bright blue eyes, those eyes that he had gone on about so many times, saying that they looked like the deepest of oceans, the bluest of skies and the most beautiful of galaxies. She had always smiled, rolling those gorgeous eyes and acting like that hadn't meant anything, even when it did. After a moment of realization, she settles in his reassuring arms, closing her eyes once again and allowing her lips to curve up in a soft smile. He kisses the top of her head, the delicate ginger strands of hair tickling his nose and chin, then neck as he rests his head upon hers once again.

Before long, her careful fingers are fixing the tie around his neck while he bounces impatiently on his toes. Calm and collected, she says something utterly brilliant, and he smiles knowingly. She manages to stumble along with him as he tugs her with him to fling the TARDIS doors open to a sparkling new planet, and it's beautiful.

He looks at her, and she's beautiful. Not just her body, but her mind. Her gloriously human mind, swirling with creative thoughts and ideas, all crammed into her head. He looks at her, consumed with her voice as she tries to explain something spectacularly indescribable. He doesn't care whether she can finish what she's trying to say, he understands. _As long as she's not shouting at the world because nobody's listening._

She laughs at him when his eyes widen at the beauty of the planet, all of space around it, her gorgeous laugh dancing it's way through his ears and into his memory. _He would never forget that laugh, even when she had._ There is snow on the sharp mountaintops and a city built of stone, winding towers and sloping bridges, all, he knows, are intricately carved by hand. He's already planning out a very impressive soliloquy on the finer points of architecture and stonework through the ages. Cylindrical rooms levered by ropes journey up and down the mountainside, and as he hugs her he can feel the cold tremors course through her body, even through her thick brown coat that she insisted upon wearing. He can taste the icy cloud in her breath as he leans down to press his cool lips against hers.

When the snow falls, it glitters like frosty starlight, and an orange sun paints the ground with rivers of gold and splashes light across the mountainsides of Gallifrey. It bounces off the red grass, and he looks at her, the sun turning her ginger hair to a sparkling gold. And then, like tendrils of silver fog, whispers of days past shiver on the air before him. The pangs of a long-lost home echoing in his chest for as long as it takes to let out a sliver of steamy breath.

But he feels in those moments, the smooth lacing of her fingers between his, and he remembers that though running constantly makes it so terribly difficult to hold onto things, he is lucky to be able to hold on to his ginger. This doesn't mean he has no home. It just means he has homes everywhere.

He wakes up some mornings to the beat of her heart against his two, and he can't stop looking at her. But then, not only her, but the smooth curve of the earth, at colour, at how light disbands darkness, at the birthmarks of time and impressions of space. At the universe he's so lucky to be a part of, even on days when it's unbearable to exist. Days when his body is racked with sobs and he recalls all the things he'd tortured himself with, just to be able to keep, and then had lost anyways.

Being alive for so long can break your hearts. But he wakes up some mornings, and the sky is beautiful and she's so magnificently beautiful and he can barely breathe he feels so, so alive. Because he wakes up some mornings, and he's in love.

He looks back now and wonders why it must be with a girl who can't remember his name. With a woman that was beautiful and witty and brave and sassy. A ginger who was so smart and so strong, stronger than anyone he'd ever met. And even though she may not remember anything, _for one moment, one shining moment, she was the most important woman in the whole wide universe._

But he remembers all these things, all the people he had once held so dear, and he breaks down. He smashes his fists against the control panel, throwing countless objects around the box of blue out of anger, shouting until he falls to his knees, gasping for breath. He cries out as the world falls around him and the universe fades away beneath his feet.

He knows he can never hold his Earth Girl in his arms again, but he must live on.

It's the curse of the Timelords.


End file.
